The Vaster wilds is a very raw and poetic fable. Whilst Lauren Groffs writing is undoubtedly stunning and the book itself very powerful, the story has very little of a plot and is a very slow read.
A servant girl escapes and makes her way across the wilderness, across forests and rivers with only hunger in her belly and the spirit to make it safely to a new way of living.
She is a courageous young girl trying to survive and you spend all 270 pages of the book willing her on to a better life.
Boy did the ending get me.
Whilst I loved the writing style and the premise of the book, slow reads are not my favourite.
I would still highly recommend this book if you enjoy plenty of descriptive narrative.
3.5 stars for beautiful story telling

Set in the early UK colonies of the Americas the story follows a girl who has escaped a fort and is struggling with starvation and violence whilst travelling through the wilderness trying to survive.

I enjoyed this book was written from the perspective of the girl, it was emotionally moving but also you that you were getting to know her hardened perspective of what survival is and how you cope it with it. The wilderness appears as an unforgiving pathless expanse, which Groff describes as gorgeous, threatening and sometimes fruitful. There is a counterpoint between the dystopia of survival in an unknown environment and the appreciation of nature and its beauty. Despite her journey being the main focus of the book Groff weaves events in the girl's past life into the modern narrative, which I found made the experience of reading varied and kept me captive. As with books that I have read before by Groff (The Matrix) there is an element of religious influence, with elements of how religion, lived experience, and the concept of the wilderness interact.

I would recommend this book for people that have previously enjoyed Groff's work but also for those who love to be engrossed in stories of survival and how it is interwoven with circumstance and how individuals act and think (for example if you enjoyed The New Wilderness by Diane Cook).

What an amazing and absorbing piece of writing. It would not surprise me if it won the Booker prize next year.

I really enjoyed the Matrix and a sign of a gr3eat author is to write novel that is totally different but equally as beguiling. If you loved the sly humour of the Matrix you will not find any of that here.

Totally engrossing and wonderfully evocative of the landscape and the mindset of a young girl living in America during a 17th century winter.

Lamentation our hero is well named, her struggles, travails and the reason she chose to leave the township are hard to stomach in more ways than one.

The novel matches the landscape, its beauty and terrifying indifference to the fate of Lamentation and her struggle to survive. You end up rooting for her all the way as she manages to claw an existence into place.

It really is a masterclass in storytelling and narrative drive. Brilliant.

Thank you to @netgalley @cornerstone and @randomhouse for allowing me the opportunity to review this novel.

Ah! The Vaster Wilds. A road trip novel for the new world. Across the stark frozen plains, raging rivers and mountainous waterfalls comes a tale of survival against a North American winter.

As Zed makes a desperate final attempt at freedom by escaping the colonial fort she’s destined to spend the remainder of her days in servitude as the occupants slowly wither through disease and starvation she finds herself out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Making her way through these wastes we learn of her story; her embattled life, the misogynistic nature of the hypocrisy of religion in Victorian England as well as the hardships that galvanised her will to survive her escape.

Honestly, there’s not much going on in this book and it’s exactly the point. Groff paints a very bleak picture of the expanse Zed needs to traverse and the actions she needs to take to survive.

The scale of this story is massive yet hyper focused and as we do meet other people on the road(in fleeting glimpses) we see the hardship they endure as colonisers in a land they don’t belong. The suffering of those who chose to invade is almost karmic in magnitude.

The Vaster Wilds is a phenomenal piece of storytelling that seeks to never shy away from the dangers of the wilderness and the sheer determination of the human will to survive.

A bodacious servant girl springs from the deadly trap that is her life into the jaws of the American wilderness where she fights to survive among nature and lawless man.
A raw and intricately descriptive novel that I read in one day and absolutely adored.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book.
I’d previously read and thoroughly enjoyed Lauren Groff’s previous book The Matrix. This was a very different experience. The story follows a young girl, Lamentation, as she flees a starving New World settlement and journeys through the wilderness of America. The book touches on themes of colonialism « Empire has no pity, and is never sated », Christianity (and the hypocrisy within it), and natural justice (or lack thereof) but….BUT….The story is told in the third person and the tone doesn’t change throughout. It makes for an almost fairy-tale esque narrative, but it also prevented me feeling particularly empathetic towards, or invested in, the main character. It is also quite repetitive. I’m sure this must have been intentional, to show the realities of such a journey, but after several chapters where the main character runs through the wilderness, gets cold and tired, finds somewhere to sleep and some of nature’s bounty to eat, I sadly started to lose interest. An intriguing idea for a story that sadly just seemed to run out of steam.

How to review a book that is almost unrelentingly dark and depressing, but also beautiful and completely atmospheric and absorbing at the same time? The narrator, a nameless girl has escaped from a disease ridden colony in the new world, and tries to make her way alone through the wilderness to a safer place. Her travails are described in gruesome detail, but overall this is a meditation, not just on the strength of an extraordinary young woman, but also on the nature of our beautiful planet, and how even centuries ago, we were already beginning to destroy it.

I started this book tentatively not sure if it was my kind of read and finished it a few hours later, completely captivated by the beauty and violence of Lauren Groffs new novel. ⁣
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I now know that I like historical fiction more than I realised with many of the books I’ve enjoyed lately falling into this category. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘴 is set in the early 1600s in the newly colonised America. A young servant girl called Lamentations has escaped from her settlement after a violent incident and is making her way through the frozen wilderness to safety. She must deploy every skill she has to survive the extreme conditions. The novel moves back and forth with Lamentations backstory, how she became a settler in the New World and her journey across the Atlantic. ⁣
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This was such a powerful narrative. Groffs visceral and often violent descriptions of Lamentations past and present were gripping. In a novel where a lot of the action is in the form of an internal philosophical monologue on life and death, she still keeps the reader completely enthralled. ⁣
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Groff describes the enduring strength of nature, from cascading waterfalls to wild bears and wolves, and how powerless we are. All the while, a vein of tension runs through the story as Lamentations health deteriorates rapidly. ⁣
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I loved this story. It is brutal and bloody but yet compulsive reading. The quality of Groffs narrative is first rate, and as readers, we are right beside Lamentations on her journey. I expect to see this novel feature in many a prize list this year. Outstanding. ⁣
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With thanks to @netgalley @cornerstone and @randomhouse for this arc in return for my honest opinion. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘴 will be published on 12 September.

I love this author and really enjoyed this book - it’s a masterclass in fantastic writing and once I realised that the book is descriptive rather than a narrative- driven book, I really got into the heroine’s struggle to survive. Definitely an unusual and compelling read.